[Sex & Kink] Do My Desires Distress Me?

When I first read that Brigit would be posing the question ‘ Do you find anything distressing or uncomfortable about your sexual thoughts, fantasies, desires, or actions? ‘ I had my post in mind straight away and again it was a post I needed to dig deep to elaborate on because the short answer is ‘no not really’ and that makes me sound ridiculous. Instead I am going to explore how I navigate talking about my kinks and why I no longer feel the need to harbour any embarrassment about them.

The Murky Past

There are moments in my early explorations of BDSM that do make me feel mortified when I think back to them, even now, 4 years on, they really do fill me with such a yucky feeling. You can read more about that in Have You Heard About Subfrenzy.

I try not to dwell on that portion of my life but it did have one wonderful silver lining, it got me out into my local kink community and that ultimately led me to Bakji and the many adventures we now find ourselves on, including this blog and the podcast. It is meeting the right people and doing lots of kink related research that enables me to write the next portion of this post.

Creating a Safe Space

Early on in our sexy friendship, I decided that I want Bakji to be able to talk to me about any of his kinks without fear of judgement or rejection. This started out as welcoming information on his submissive desires despite the fact I had at the time said I would never be interested in Topping him (how wrong I was).

Luckily for me, Bakji also has the same approach and this means we have always agreed that even if it isn’t a kink we are likely to want to engage in neither of us should ever be afraid of sharing our desires with the other. It definitely took time to gain our confidence, but we are now at a point where we have shared all our kinky interests with each other and now our only dilemma is trying them and searching for new kinks to enjoy.

That’s Not My Kink

One of the things I cannot help myself from doing is reading about all kinks and fetishes whether they are mine or not. The reason for this is two-fold, one, I’m really nosey and two, I like to be prepared. As a non-monogamous person one day a potential play partner might come to me and declare an interest in a kink they are nervous to discuss and I want to be able to talk about that with them without first screwing my nose up and going ‘ugh what’s that?’. Which is an alarming common response even with seasoned kinksters.

This level of curiosity means I have come into contact with people who have all kinds of kinks, including some that are almost everyone’s hard limit list, some that have been declared hard limits for myself and some that the person confessing them has been surprised to discover are actually fairly commonplace.

Even if I have to decline in engaging in a particular kink, I always try to do so kindly, even if it’s a total stranger asking me. Those moments where some ridicules or looks sickened by your kink can be hard for people to bounce back from. People will do this even with fairly low-level kinks, I’ve heard people declare they wouldn’t be friends with someone if they had a more extreme, yet legal and consenting kink.

What About …?

Often when I explain that this is my approach the occasional person will say; ‘okay but what about this kink, or that kink, or xyz kink?’ trying to find a kink that will make me squick out and declare it’s shameful. Here’s the thing, that won’t happen. The only time that will happen is if you present to me a ‘kink’ that is actually illegal, causes harm, involves genuine non-consent (this does not include consensual non-consent fantasies or kinks) or is essentially a crime passed off as a ‘fetish’.

Scat (playing with poo) is one of the most common kinks people use as a ‘what if’ and while it isn’t my kink, it really isn’t the shock factor kink that people expect it to be. I’ve also had emails from people into rape play and race play, always with a sense of mortification that they are into those things, and in these specific instances they were level headed and sensitive people who were looking to play safely and with everyone’s consent where no shame was needed. Unless of course feeling the shame is part of the kinky fun, but that is a topic for another blog post.

Words Are Hard

One of the things I am always worried about is that Bakji and I, either here or on the podcast, will create a false view of how we communicate our desire. While we are now both fairly comfortable discussing our desires face to face, this wasn’t always the case and we did much of our early explorations via fetish checklists or Trello. Trello is now our go-to method of sharing our kinky thoughts.

Not only does it remove the awkwardness of face to face confessions but it is exciting to open up our shared board and see what the other person has put up for consideration. I highly recommend finding an outlet for sharing your kinky desires that doesn’t require verbal communication. Shared journalling can also be a good option if apps like Trello aren’t your thing.

Does My Kink Distress You?

One of the only aspects of my kinks that I ever take time to worry about is whether or not they might cause distress or discomfort to other people. Some of my kinks could be seen as the fetishization of a particular subsection of the population and I would hate for anyone who identifies as the subject of my kinks to feel distressed by my interests. I feel like this could be misinterpreted as worse than it is so I will give examples to give a broader picture.

Ever since I was a youngster I was into androgynous folk and people who identified as one gender but had presentations of the other gender. I grew up in a world where gender was definitely binary, meaning male and female was all I had to work with in terms of language, in terms of arousal though I knew there was so much more than liking boys or girls and that has never left me. Interesting my sexuality has never caused me and distress or shame either, partly because I’ve never really cared about the opinions of others and have always found people who didn’t judge and quickly moved away from those who did.

Medical paraphernalia is another big area of potential exploration for me and this includes wheelchairs. One of the things I find appealing is binding Bakji in such a way that he would not be able to remove himself from a wheelchair and subjecting him to lots of wicked and wonderful things. I also have huge attraction to all things ‘asylum’ which I wrote about in Nurse Floss Will See You Now.

This worry also applies to discussing kinks that might be limits or triggers for other people, for example, medical play and blood play. I do discuss these kinks on the blog because I don’t see any good reason not to, but I do always provide a content warning at the beginning of any of those posts, especially if they include pictures.

I don’t, however, have any feelings of concern, distress or shame for having these desires and interests. One of the reasons being is that I know in my heart they do not come from despicable or shameful places. I also know I would never coerce or force anyone to engage in any of these kinks if it made them feel uncomfortable. I honestly believe that provided all parties involved are risk aware consenting adults that no kink should be off limits in terms of discussing it and that provided all people involved would like to give it a go then trying even the more unique or extreme kinks should be achievable.

It’s Not That Easy Though

I want to be very clear that throughout this whole post I have talking from a personal perspective, where my kinks are not related to or likely to trigger past traumas. I’m also aware that I didn’t grow up in a oppressive situation and I’ve never been taught to link shame to my body/sex etc. I’ve also never been subjected to physical or emotional abuse (emotional maybe, but not as the serious end of things) and I know all these things and more has a huge effect on how we view our bodies, our sexuality and our kinky desires.

One of the reasons I commit so much time to this blog and the podcast is to be part of a conversation that helps people explore and understand their desires in a safe and understanding manner. There is no kink that I won’t discuss and I will admit to every kink I’ve got whether I think it’s odd or not if it means making someone else feel less alone with their own interests.

If I had one bit of advice for working through feelings of distress or shame surrounding your kinks it would be ‘keep talking’. I don’t necessarily mean out loud to your partner either. Blogging, journalling, therapy are all valid ways of working through the thoughts we have about our sexual and kink desires and why we have them and how we want to explore them.

My online door is always open too, I don’t have all the answers, but I can promise I have no judgement should anyone ever wish to disclose something they are concerned about being interested in. As best I can I’m also willing to blog about and podcast about a variety of kinks if it means people getting to see their kinks discussed more widely and perhaps helping other people understand a kink that isn’t theirs a little better.

6 Replies to “[Sex & Kink] Do My Desires Distress Me?”

I think that you give some really good advice here about the importance and value of good communication. I also admire the fact that you can speak so openly about so many things. I try really hard to do this but I know that there are still things that I am holding back with 🙂

When I was young, and still really, was/am attracted to effeminate guys – camp i suppose. I think it is because they appear and sound so gentle and then you get them into the bedroom and they literally rock – you know – just looking back lol xx